


carving teeth into the pumpkin sunset

by louciferish



Series: Scare Me [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, DJ Otabek Altin, First Meetings, Ghost Mila Babicheva, M/M, Minor Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, OtaYuri Week, Vampire Yuri Plisetsky, YOI Spooky Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:41:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27197294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/pseuds/louciferish
Summary: Minutes ago, Yuri had been slinking around the house, making the quiet wssh-wssh-wssh sound that Potya preferred over her own name, ducking his head to peek under the furniture for the shadow of her fluffy brown tail so he could gather her up, take her down to the basement with him to settle into bed, like any other night.But no. The fucking door is open.-When Potya goes missing just before sunrise, Vampire!Yuri is forced to ask his human neighbor for help retrieving his cat.
Relationships: Otabek Altin/Yuri Plisetsky
Series: Scare Me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985444
Comments: 8
Kudos: 76
Collections: Otayuri Week 2020





	carving teeth into the pumpkin sunset

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ludo's new Halloween song "Scare Me"
> 
> Otayuri week and Spooky week overlap, so I decided to combine them! I have four-ish stories planned in this 'verse, but currently only 1.5 written because time is fake.
> 
> No beta we die like spooky scary skeletons

“Fuck,” Yuri says softly. It sounds too hesitant for the circumstances, so he tries a few more times. “Shit. God _damnit_.”

For all the force he puts behind that last one, it doesn’t send him back in time or close his front door, which is gaping open a few centimeters, swaying in the early morning breeze. Minutes ago, Yuri had been slinking around the house, making the quiet _wssh wssh wssh_ sound that Potya preferred over her own name, ducking his head to peek under the furniture for the shadow of her fluffy brown tail so he could gather her up, take her down to the basement with him to settle into bed, like any other night.

But no. The fucking _door_ is open. 

Yuri stands behind the thick wooden bulk of it and peeks his head out slowly, eyes falling to the concrete porch and iron railings. No cat. Fuck _again_. He scans the streets -- empty -- and then focuses his gaze on the sky. The street lights are still on, glowing yellow to illuminate empty sidewalks in little puddles of day. Beyond them, the horizon is brightening, paling from black to blue over distant silhouettes of jagged rooftops. Most of the light is false dawn, not the real thing, but it nevertheless makes the backs of Yuri’s eyes ache when he looks at it for too long. The time on his phone is 4:32 AM. Potya isn’t anywhere in sight. He’s screwed.

Yuri shoulders the door closed with a _thud_ and paces into his living room. He ought to be downstairs already, scrolling through his phone in bed with Potya on the other pillow. He can’t go outside now -- it’s far too dangerous -- but he also can’t leave his cat out there, all day, _alone_.

He makes a circuit of the living room before swerving into the spotless kitchen, tossing his phone from palm to palm with each step. He opens his contact list and chews his lip, tucking a long blonde strand back behind his ear. Yakov and Lilia will both be asleep and grumpy if he wakes them up so early, assuming they wake up and answer his call at all. 

The only other option is contacting Victor and Yuuri, and that’s a work of futility even on the best days. For one, no matter which number he dials, there’s a fifty-fifty chance which of them will answer it. For another, they can’t go outside at the ass crack of dawn _either_ , but if Yuri calls and says he needs them to, stupid Victor is likely to try it anyway and get himself fried. If that happens, Yuri will be forced to either listen to Yuuri weep for the rest of eternity, or listen to Victor brag about his new tan. In either scenario, Yuri will never live this night down.

Yuri’s gaze falls onto a pile of colorful papers stacked on his kitchen counter. Most of it is mail intended for the house’s previous resident. He’d found a pile in front of the door each day for the first week after he moved in, and at first he’d put it all aside, intending to send it off to her later. Since then, he’s realized that Miss Mila Babicheva is, in fact, very much deceased, mostly due to the fact that she keeps popping through walls to bother him in the middle of the night.

As he thinks that, he eyes the kitchen walls with suspicion. It feels like thinking about Mila could cause her to appear, but there’s no sign of a red-headed shadow lurking nearby. Maybe it’s too close to dawn for her too.

Now the mail is haunting him almost as much as its owner is, but on top of the pile, stuck between a flyer for laundry service and a past-due bill, is a black embossed business card. Yuri fishes it out, holding it between his fingers like a lit cigarette. 

_DJ Beks_ , it says. _Parties and events_. Beneath that, there’s an email and a phone number. Yuri bites his own lip, then sucks at the thin trickle of blood.

Yuri doesn’t really know the guy. They only met the once, for about five minutes if that, on moving day. Yuri had been waiting, sitting on the front stoop of his new home as Victor and Yuuri ran things inside, rearranging furniture and stapling up blackout curtains. It was after three in the morning, and the streets were empty, so silent that Yuri heard the _thunk thunk_ of boots on the sidewalk coming from a kilometer away. 

The guy in the boots was short but well-built, dressed in black jeans and carrying a leather jacket over his shoulder despite the heat rising from the pavement. He’d paused in front of Yuri’s porch, waiting, and after a few more seconds of tapping at his phone, Yuri had raised his head to look at him properly. He looked cool. Young. 

“You new here?” the guy asked, and Yuri nodded. He wasn’t interested in bothering with small talk with someone he’d never see again. The guy hooked his thumb toward the house next to Yuri’s, huddled up against his unit like a baby bird tucked under its mama’s wing. “We’re neighbors.”

Yuri nodded again. Neighbors, right. That was something people had in the city.

“Here.” Reaching into his back pocket, the guy fished out his wallet, then slid a card out before flicking it toward Yuri, between his fingers, like a cigarette. “In case you ever need it, I guess.”

“...Thanks.” Yuri took it, not looking at the name. He tucked it under his phone, went back to his game, and fought the urge to look up again when he heard the neighbor climb his own steps and unlock his door.

He’d expected that to be the last he saw of the man. Until now, he’d been right. Free at last from living under Victor and Yuuri’s constant watch, Yuri has no one traipsing into his room all hours, demanding he go out and stare at the stars, or buy hot coffee he can’t drink, or make _snow angels_ at midnight. Blissfully, he hasn’t left the house at all in the nearly two months he’s lived here, aside from opening the front door every couple days to pick up the meal delivery Yakov leaves on his stoop.

Yuri looks at the digital clock on his new stove, and the red numbers glare back. _4:45_. There’s only an hour left between him and full dawn, and he’s still too new, to vulnerable to take risks like that.

He needs to ask for help. “Fuck,” he whispers for the fifth time tonight. He likes the way it sounds on the still air, but it does little to relieve his irritation. 

Yuri can move quickly when he wants to, when no one is around to make him control his steps and still his limbs into some semblance of normalcy. Alone in his own home, he’s at the living room wall in under a second. Stretching his arms, he places both palms flat on the cool plaster and closes his eyes. 

He can’t see through walls, but Victor always says it’s easier to _visualize_ what you’re doing at first, and unfortunately he’s often right. So, Yuri imagines the plaster under his hands giving way to wood, then fluffy pink lines of insulation, then wood again before he comes out the other side and once more feels plaster beneath his hands. He focuses on the pressure beneath his fingertips and stops breathing, so the only sounds in the room will be those on the other side of the shared wall. With his eyes closed and his breath stilled, there’s nothing left but the rare, sluggish movement of his own heart and the taste of stale copper on his tongue.

A flicker of noise edges into being, and Yuri grasps for it, catching the vapor of it in his hands. It’s a thready hum of music, a beat with the barest hint of a melody overlaid. He traces the noise and finds others -- the spattering rush of water running, the tuneless rumbling of pipes, and another beat. 

Yuri frowns at the steady thump, concentrating. It sounds familiar, as if he should be able to name the song from the cadence alone. 

_Don’t get lost._ It’s Yuuri’s voice in his head that reminds him, pulls him back before he pushes his senses too far outside himself. For a moment, his head spins, and his hands on the wall become necessary, keeping him upright as he settles back into his own body. He pretends to breathe and focuses on that instead, the useless whoosh of his lungs working because he wills them too.

He got what he needed, though. The neighbor is home, awake, and when Yuri’s head clears enough that he’s seeing his own feet on the bare hardwood floor beneath him instead of the space between their walls, he pulls out the business card and the phone, and he dials.

The phone rings twice before it connects, a slow, quiet voice on the other end asking, “Hello?”

“My cat got loose,” Yuri blurts out. 

There’s a pause, then the voice asks. “I’m sorry. Who is this?”

Right. Phone etiquette. Yuri’s never been good at it. “This is Yuri.” Silence. “Your neighbor? Unit twelve.”

“ _Oh._ Hey. What’s up?”

Yuri tries to suppress a stab of fresh irritation. He grits his teeth and repeats, “My cat got out. I can’t go look for her right now, because,” he glances at the clock. It’s 5:08. “I’m indisposed. Can you help?”

Something rattles in the background of the call, followed by a faint thump. “Uhhh sure. I was getting ready for bed, but-- Hang on a minute. Let me get some pants on.” Shuffling, soft sounds and a quiet grunt, and Yuri realizes the man intends to get dressed with the phone pressed to his ear. 

Crossing to his front window, he peels back the edge of a curtain and peers out to a streak of cool light highlighting the horizon. “Just knock when you find her,” Yuri says. “Unless it’s after 5:45. Then don’t bother.” He hangs up.

The blackout curtain taunts Yuri. It’s way too close to sunrise now for him to mess with it again and risk letting daylight in the room. He’s made the call. The guy -- _DJ Beks_ , his brain reminds him, and that _can’t_ be a real name -- sounded like he actually wanted to help. That’s as much as Yuri can do. 

Arms clasped behind him, he paces the living room, listening to the soft shuffle of his own bare feet. Dawn is closing in, and his internal alarms are pinging, the little hairs on his arms and neck raising to alert him. Instinct pushes him to flee downstairs, and he bites his lip until it bleeds again, worrying the wound to stay open like a puppy gnawing at a chew toy. 

It feels like an hour that he waits, each second that passes ticking closer to sunrise. Once the sun rises, he’ll have no choice but to flee, Potya or no Potya, and cross his fingers that she can make it through a day alone. In reality, it’s less than ten minutes before Yuri hears a quiet tap on the front door.

He’s across the room in a flash and flings the door wide, standing behind it so the heavy wood will shield his body from any early light. After a moment, the neighbor steps inside far enough that Yuri can let the door swing closed behind him.

“Potya,” Yuri gasps, and reaches out to scoop the brown and white fluff from the other man’s arms. “Where did you run off to?” In answer, Potya only purrs, headbutting his chest. 

“She didn’t get far. I found her hiding in the bushes between your porch and mine.” 

Yuri glances up from the cat in his arms and gives the neighbor a once-over. He’s wearing low-slung flannel pajama pants and a leather jacket with no shirt underneath. His black combat boots are open, tongues sticking out and untied laces trailing on the floor. It’s a strange choice of outfit, and it can’t be more than five degrees out. Yuri tilts his head, considering it.

“Thanks,” he says, hesitating before he adds, “ _Beks_.” It’s as close as he can get to saying, _please leave now_ , but the man doesn’t seem to get the hint. 

The neighbor folds his arms over his broad chest. “It’s Otabek, really. But you can call me Beks if you like, or Beka.”

“Okay.” Potya, tired after a very stressful twenty minutes of life in the wild, jumps from Yuri’s arms and trots toward the basement door, fluffy tail held high. Yuri should be following her. Otabek hasn’t moved. Exasperated, Yuri demands, “Did you expect a reward or something?”

“No.” Otabek shifts his weight, but his dark eyes remain focused on Yuri. “You keep a weird schedule.”

The stab of anxiety Yuri gets about that is stupid. No one’s noticed such things and thought _vampire_ in at least a hundred years. Still, the observation puts him on the defensive. “So? You’re awake too.”

“Yeah, I had a gig.” Otabek shrugs, shifts again. He yawns and covers it with his elbow, then shakes his head. “There’s another one next weekend.” He pauses, as if he expects a response to that. When Yuri says nothing, he adds, “You could come.” 

Oh. Otabek doesn’t think Yuri is a dangerous creature of the night. Otabek thinks Yuri is a fucking _club kid_. Which, actually, he is. Or, he used to be. With the whole vampire thing, it’s been years since Yuri went out at night to have fun, dance, listen to music. He’d been once, with Yuuri and Victor, but the night was cut short when--

Well, he was still new to this stuff back then.

The invitation is perhaps even more tempting than Otabek intended it to be -- the music, the fashion, a dark, crowded floor packed with writhing bodies, dripping with sweat, joy, lust, _blood_ \--

A voice in his head murmurs, _Careful_ , and it sounds suspiciously similar to Yuuri. Even when they aren’t here, they ruin his fun.

“I’ll think about it,” Yuri says to Otabek’s invitation, meaning no.

“Great. I’ll see you there,” Otabek replies, as if he doesn’t know he’s being let down gently. “Have a good night.”

“Sure.” Yuri maintains his distance, waits for Otabek to let himself out. As soon as the door clicks shut, he zips forward to lock it -- knob, deadbolt, chain. It’s tempting to check the window one last time to see how close he’s cut it, but the clock on his phone says it’s 5:28, and that’s more than close enough. 

The basement stairs creak when he puts his weight on them, and Potya makes and interrogatory _mrrp_ from her station at the foot of his bed. “Little troublemaker,” Yuri mutters at her. The steel door is soundless when he pulls it closed behind him, and another set of locks click into place.

Secured for the morning, Yuri finally descends the steps to sleep the day away.


End file.
